In this photo (left to right) : Wayne Short, Peter the Pukeko - Trev Hendra (Trev’s Plumbing) and James Neilson.

Stack the deck in your favour

WORKING COLLECTIVELY TO SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESS & CREATE TRUST IN THE COMMUNITY

When it comes to campaign and driving public awareness of the importance of only using authorised trades-people, innovative thinking and proactive action are not foreign to local Feilding tradies.

Wayne Short of My Plumbing Depot knows building a successful small business is a huge challenge. If you don’t have a brand creating consumer assurance in the industry, it can be hard for local businesses to generate trust in the services they provide.

“I support my trade customers in any way I can, says Wayne. I display the Ask-for-the-card posters in-store and have prominent roadside signage to promoting the Ask-for-the-card help educate the consumer.”

“Making sure illegal operators don’t stand a chance in our local community is essential. I’ve taken things a step further—I put up a notice board in-store to display the media releases on the Board’s latest prosecutions. My retail customers take the time to read them too.”

“Supporting community events is a great way to interact with the consumer. This type of support and face-to-face interaction is invaluable in creating trust,” Wayne continues.

“The small business marketing budget can be pretty tight. Engaging in these events in a visually notable way and getting impact is not always possible—so I came up with a collective way to do it, and we got winning results.”

“We entered a float in the Christmas parade promoting the plumbing, gasfitting and drainlaying trades. All the local tradespeople collectively supported the initiative and came together making a joint financial contribution. The public awareness that we achieved was great. We dispersed 30kg of lollies to on-lookers and were a big hit with the local community. We were delighted to win best business float on the day.”